Relax! The eEQE will work out fine.

Earlier this week the EPO published some additional information about how the 2021 exams will be brought online. This information appears to be leading to a lot of discussion and concern among this year's candidates. On the DeltaPatents EQE Blogs, comments and complaints are pouring in. The reasoning behind the expressed concern and complaints is clear and understandable. If there is one thing you don't want when preparing for a difficult and important exam, it is uncertainty about what the exam will actually look like. It would therefore have been nice if the EPO had not just published a set of rules and procedures, but also an explanation of how and why they decided to use the now proposed format for this first time ever online qualification exam.

However, it is important to realise that the exam is still work in progress. The switch from offline to online is not straightforward and is to be made in a very short period of time. More information will come and it will be possible to practice with the exam software before the actual exams. More importantly, the exam itself, i.e. the questions that are asked, the answers that are expected, and the skills and knowledge you will need to pass have not changed. If in an average year, 34% of all first-time candidates manage to pass the full exam, this will likely not be very different in 2021. And, like in every other year, it will be the 34% best prepared candidates who manage to score the required amount of marks.

Most of the heated discussion seems to be about the breaks that have been introduced into some of the exams and the different ways in which these breaks will affect the different exam papers. The main reason behind the introduction of breaks is the need for screen breaks when you have to work behind a computer screen for extended periods of time. It appears to be the intention of the exam committee to provide these breaks without having to change the nature of the exams too much (or at all). Unfortunately, some papers are more suitable for breaking into parts than other papers. The pre-exam has a large number of mostly independent multiple-choice question and gets a large number of breaks. For paper A, most candidates will need the full duration of the exam to first draft and then refine the wording of their claims. You start with a claim that looks quite good, but when defending its inventive step, you find out that some adjustments may be needed. Therefore, paper A will not have any breaks at all.

Paper C and D both have separate and independent questions too. Although many candidates may be used to start with a full initial analysis of the complete paper before answering the first questions or attacking the first claim, there is no specific need to do this. The paper C methodology we teach at DeltaPatents, for example, works on a claim-by-claim basis. You first analyse the claim you want to attack, and then you look for the most useful prior art documents to attack that particular claim with. The exact order in which you process all the available information and prepare your answer will, of course, be affected by the introduction of a break, but you will still need the same processes, skills and knowledge to come to a correct answer as in any earlier exam. If you train well for the old exams, you will be able to do the new exams too.

What may be good to know is that the UK candidates went through all of this before. In October, they sat the first ever online UK patent attorney exams. In the summer, debates about the online examination were as heated as they now are in relation to the EQE. In the end, it all turned out to work quite well for most candidates. This does, of course, not guarantee that the eEQE will run equally smoothly, but I am sure that the EQE organisation will do what it can to allow the candidates to focus their preparation on the substance of the exam, and not on the form.